Sharan is a really good player who certainly knows his stuff, the last time was played was at last year’s GT when he was using Paladins, and he spanked me in a kill points game so I was hoping for a bit of pay back.

Roughly his list was…

Some fancy pants forge world HQ who had a 3++ and a blast weapon that ignored cover (gulp!)2 lots of Fire Warriors in Devil Fish with Shrouding
20 Kroot
2 Battle Suits with Twin Missile Launchers
3 Broadsides with lots of Drones and fancy tricks
2 Hammer Heads with Rail Guns and Shrouding
Eldrad
3 Jetbikes
Aegis Line with Las Cannon

It was night fight first turn and he decided to let me setup & go first. There was no line of sight blocking terrain in my deployment zone so the Manticore’s would have to settle with hiding behind a ruin and getting a 4+ (hopefully a 2+ during the first turn). The CCS’s Chimera was deployed empty in middle of the field. By the way I had deployed I gave Sharan a tough choice to make. He had a small 8” x 4” space in one corner which was the only place I would not be able to shoot him with the Manticore’s first turn thanks to the FOC search light on the Chimera. He chose to cram Eldrad, the Broadsides and both Hamerhead in that space. The Commander and suit’s went behind a LOS blocker on the other side of the board, everything else was in reserve with the Kroot outflanking.

Unfortunately for Sharan, even with the Ignore Cover Psychic power on the Broadsides after his first turn of shooting only an Immobilised result on one Manticore was caused. I then proceeded to hammer the squashed up Broadsides squad with Both Manticore’s, (sniping Eldrad of course), I caused somewhere in the region of 20+ S10 wounds. Eldrad bit the dust along with all the Shield Drones and 2 Broadsides. I’d netted first blood and by the end of turn 2 my grey hunters had grabbed the Relic. The following few turns we traded blows, ultimately I grabbed Line Breaker through a Platoon Command Squad jumping in the empty Chimera and rushing up the board late on, the Vendetta came on and sniped his Warlord, and I lost the Hyperios and long fangs to Fire Warriors. The highlight was when 20 Kroot outflanked right next to my Manticore’s and managed to kill one by rapid firing into the side armor.

Was a fun game and Sharan kept it fun despite it looking bleak for him from turn 2 onwards.

6 – 0 Win to me.

Game 3 –Andy Humphries – Necrons, Vanguard / Big Guns Never Tire

So on the back of 2 wins I’m on Table 4 going into the 3rd game. Andy is a good player, who plays a surprisingly balanced Necron list which is testament to the guy. The big points of this game are going to show up my In-experience both playing with IG, and against Necron flyers.

His list was something like

2 Overlords in Barges, (BOTH WITH MINDSHACKLE SCARABS….. more on that later)
2 big units of immortals with teleporting Cryprtek’s
3 units of Warrior in Night Scythes with double Storm
3 Annihilation Barges

First turn was night fight and Andy chose to go first after winning the roll off.

There is a MASSIVE fortress of redemption right in the middle of the table, and considering that my guns have a 48” to 72” ranges and Andy’s entire arsenal are 24” it meant he could just walk up behind this massive line of sight blocker, then jump over in his skimmers and just pick off the stuff that was a threat to him. He was really ballsy with the teleporting Immortals (and didn’t scatter once !) and used them to focus on my Hydra’s and Hyperios to take out my interceptor & sky fire capabilities.

Unfortunately my Manticore’s really weren’t at the races in this game, despite the re-roll to the scatter dice. Event when I hit I seemed to have an inability to roll higher than a 3 for armor pen, so never got the chance to roll on the damage chart. I tried to bring down the Annihilation Barges so that I could claw back some VP’s that way. As I couldn’t reduce his firepower I was being whittled down as the turns went on and ended up getting tabled L

A 0 – 16 loss.

After our game it turned out Andy had an illegal list as he was over by 15 points. This was a genuine mistake and he incurred penalties for the 3 games he’s played like that before. I spoke to him in the pub later that night. Turns out he wrote his list at work from memory and put down the points for the 5 Warriors in a Night Scythe as 160 not 165. So at the end he had 15 points left and so threw an extra set of Mind Shackle Scarabs in. I really feel for Andy as this lead to him missing out on qualification by 1 place, and we had a really enjoyable game and he’s nice guy to boot.

That rounded off day 1. A solid 2 wins under my belt. Talking that night we predicted that 3 wins and a draw would secure qualification for the final, so in theory I shouldn’t hit the sauce too hard and be in a position to actually take part in game 5.

Well that didn’t go to plan thanks to Co and his Yager Bomb obsession; we rolled into bed very merry around 3am. Day 2 was going to be a slog……….

About Chris Swaine

Chris Swaine is a fairly average gamer and when not indulging in miniature war-gaming plays on his xbox and gets out on his Mountain Bike.